


Break This Heavy Chain

by Punka_Writes



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Anxiety, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Touch-Starved, absolutely no plot except Barry Bluejeans getting much-needed hugs after Story & Song, post-canon cuddle pile, will someone please hug this poor sad nerd?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:15:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21642787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Punka_Writes/pseuds/Punka_Writes
Summary: "They won, and the world survived it, and now it’s night and the stars that hold no terrors are spread out in a wash of brilliance overhead, and they’ve built the biggest bonfire Neverwinter’s ever seen. People have dragged logs and furniture and blankets out to spread around and there’s drinking and dancing and laughing and crying and it’s all a lot, for a guy who’s been mostly all by himself in a cave or in the wilderness for most of the past ten years. Barry’s exhausted and overwhelmed, and so he’s found a crate set back some from the most of the commotion and he’s sitting slumped back against it, just sort of letting things wash over him."In the immediate aftermath of Story and Song, Barry Bluejeans could really use a hug.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup
Comments: 34
Kudos: 123





	Break This Heavy Chain

Barry is tired. 

No, that really doesn’t cover it. Barry’s _exhausted_. He feels like someone’s siphoned all the vitality out of his blood, hollowed out his bones and filled them with lead, like somebody picked him up and wrung the magic out of him like water out of a sponge, like . . . well, he could go on, theoretically, but he’s too tired to metaphor any more than that. He’s only had a body for a day or so this time, and it’s already achy and strained and ready to collapse and sleep for a week. 

But they _won_ , that’s the thing. They won, and the world survived it, and now it’s night and the stars that hold no terrors are spread out in a wash of brilliance overhead, and they’ve built the biggest bonfire Neverwinter’s ever seen. People have dragged logs and furniture and blankets out to spread around and there’s drinking and dancing and laughing and crying and it’s all a lot, for a guy who’s been mostly all by himself in a cave or in the wilderness for most of the past ten years. Barry’s exhausted and overwhelmed, and so he’s found a crate set back some from the most of the commotion and he’s sitting slumped back against it, just sort of letting things wash over him.

Lup’s sitting (hovering) at his side, a warm tingle of magic against his skin, casting Mage Hand over and over and over so she can run spectral fingers through his hair, like they used to do for each other all the time back before . . . before. It doesn’t feel like a person’s touch, exactly, more like a weird breeze, but it’s Lup’s and she’s here and he can see her and hear her again, and he can feel her not-fingers tugging strands of hair apart, brushing his scalp, and Barry doesn’t know exactly when he started crying silently but he definitely is. 

It has been four hundred and twenty-seven days since the last time Barry had a body. Four hundred and twenty-nine days since the last time somebody touched him kindly, if he counts the time Merle slid his hand under Barry’s neck to rouse him, put his arm behind his shoulders to help him sit up and drink a healing potion. Back when they didn’t know they knew each other. Back when Barry couldn’t understand why this dwarf touching him gently felt like _home_ , when he couldn’t explain to himself why his heart ached when Merle’s hands went away. He’d blamed it on the gerblin-induced concussion. 

He didn’t remember until he was dead that Merle had been Merle, his family. He didn’t remember until he was dead that, before Merle helping him sit up and drink, it had been seven hundred twenty-one days since anybody had done more than briefly shake his hand. He didn’t even remember until he was dead that he’d been keeping count of how long he went without contact, which was maybe not a great habit to be in, honestly, but that really hadn’t stopped him. 

“Babe?” Lup’s Mage Hand goes still against his scalp. 

“Um.” Barry blinks rapidly, trying to clear away tears without raising a hand to wipe them away. He’s slumped gradually sideways and now he’s sitting half-in, half-out of Lup’s lich form, so that everything has a crackly red haze spread over it. “Sorry.”

“I mean I came up with a good goof for this, but it’s pretty lewd.” Lup says, but he can tell she’s worried about him from her voice (her voice that _he can hear_ because she’s here, she’s with him, she’s finally really with him again).

Barry laughs, although it ends up sounding sad and watery because of the crying, and he wishes he could wrap his arms around her for real and hold her forever. “I missed you so much.” 

“Same, baby.” She says, and there’s four thousand two hundred and seventeen days of longing and love and hurt in it. She presses her Mage Hand to his cheek. It doesn’t have the finesse to brush away tears right now -- Lup’s probably exhausted, too, though of course exhaustion feels different when you aren’t wearing bones and blood and muscles to carry it around in. Barry knows; lich exhaustion feels like every arcane act you attempt comes out shaky and insubstantial. 

He still tries to lean into the touch, which causes him to skew drunkenly back out of Lup’s spectral body so that everything is regular-colored again, tinged orange with firelight and black with shadows. The Mage Hand pushes back against his stubbled cheek as much as a weak spectral construct of magic can. 

It takes one hundred and twenty days to grow a new body to completion. If he leaves tomorrow morning at first light he can be to the cave in a day and a half, maybe an hour to get his components ready and another hour to cast the spell, which means one hundred and twenty-two days, more or less, until he can hold Lup again, until he can touch her and she can . . . she can . . . 

Shit, now he’s ugly crying. He shakes his head and buries his face in his hands while Lup makes a sad, startled noise. He hunches his shoulders, trying to get a grip. Trying to get his brain to stop repeating _one hundred and twenty-two days_ over and over again. 

And he has to . . . fuck, he has to go back to that stupid empty cave again, because the tank is there but also his notes and his extra glasses and all of his clothes are there. He never has to _stay_ there again, at least, and that counts for something, and they won and Lup’s alive and he should be counting his fucking blessings but he’s _tired_ and he wishes he could feel like he was actually done, like there wasn’t still more to do. He wishes his anxious genius brain would stop treating this night like it’s just a checkmark, a step in the endless plan, he wants to just sit and relax and be with his wife and be happy and his stupid fucking brain won’t get with that program. 

“Babe.” Lup’s Mage Hand brushes the back of his neck, rests on his shoulder. It’s cool to the touch and not quite heavy enough to be a person’s hand. 

“Sorry.” Barry sounds miserable, which is fitting because he feels miserable. 

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Gods, how is she even real? How is it possible that her always saying the perfect thing wasn’t something his brain made up to help shepherd him through years (four thousand two hundred and seventeen days) of missing her so much it made his bones hurt? 

The soft, strange crackle that is the sensation of her lich form touches his cheek. “I’ll be back in a second.” 

Barry’s heart drops absolutely stone still with panic and he yanks his head up desperately, “No, Lup, hang on --”

But she’s slipping away already, though she hears him and looks back and grows suddenly brighter, red lightning so bright it outshines the fire, impossible for him to lose track of in the dark. He stops himself somehow from standing and running after her as she flits around revelers and mourners and people like him who are apparently caught in-between both.

He keeps his eyes on her instead, scrubbing awkwardly at his cheeks, sucking in deep breaths until he’s at least not quite so weepy. She’s not going to leave him again. She wouldn’t. She can’t. He can’t survive it if she does. 

She doesn’t, of course she doesn’t. She comes back in what feels like forever but is probably less than two minutes with a figure trailing in her wake. He knows who it is even before Magnus raises a hand and calls his name. 

Barry cringes a little bit, because he looks at Magnus and he sees a godsdamned wooden mannequin begging his friends to understand why he needs a beating heart. He sees Taako vomiting blood and Merle's single too-dark eye narrowed at the red robe he doesn't yet know was responsible for all their latest suffering. Maybe there's blame enough to go around for all the shit they've all been through, but what happened in Wonderland? That was all Barry. How many days, he wonders, is it going to take him to process that guilt?

Magnus isn't a mannequin. He has all his fingers and all his hair is the color it should be. He has scars and wrinkles Barry doesn't recognize but only the ones he got in the years (three thousand six hundred forty-three days) he lived between the forgetting and Phandalin, when Barry found him again and didn’t know it. 

Magnus grins and drops himself onto the ground at Barry’s side with a characteristic lack of hesitance. He’s obviously been drinking and obviously been dancing, rumpled and slightly out of breath. The grin softens as he looks at Barry, and he nudges Barry’s shoulder with his elbow. “Hey.”

Barry swallows the lump in his throat from just watching his friend _exist_ like this, and not having to wait until days or months from now to remember how to recognize him. “Hey.” 

Magnus doesn’t really wait for any kind of invitation, or maybe he just remembers now that he doesn’t need one -- either way, he reaches out one arm and hooks it around Barry’s shoulder and pulls him into a bear hug. 

Something inside Barry’s chest cracks right open. His arms come up on instinct and wrap around Magnus’s barrel chest and he squeezes too tight, glasses knocked askew by Magnus’s shoulder, cheek mashed up against his shirt. 

It has been two thousand seven hundred and eight days since anybody hugged him.

Two thousand seven hundred and eight days, and that was a slightly too enthusiastic welcome-to-our-inn greeting from a stranger. This is warm and safe and familiar, this is Magnus, this is part of _home_ , and yep, he’s ugly crying again. He should care about that, maybe, but he doesn’t let it make him let go. 

Lup’s presence is warm against his back, and he can tell she’s smiling from the tone of her voice. “You needed a hug, Bear.” She says, because of course she knew, because she’s perfect. “Figured I’d get the crew’s second-best hugger on the job since I’m missing my equipment at the moment.” 

“I won that contest!” Magnus is kind of crying, too, Barry realizes. Mostly happy-crying, but maybe some bittersweetness in it, too. They’ve been apart for such a long time, all of them. They’ve missed so much. 

“Burnsides!” The voice is strident and sharp and can only be Taako, and his shadow falls across Barry’s face and distracts him, temporarily, from the wet patch he’s leaving on Magnus’s shirt.

Taako stands with his hands on his hips, hat shoved back, glaring down at Magnus with ferocity they all know is fake. He jabs a finger in Magnus’s direction. “You! What did you do to our nerd?”

Barry chokes out a strangled, wet-sounding laugh. Gods, Taako looks and moves and sounds like _himself_ in a way he never has, not since . . . not since. 

“Look at him!” Taako continues, flopping down with considerably more grace than Magnus did, positioning himself on the other side of Barry so that Lup is shimmering between them and Taako’s knee is actually in Lup’s side. She doesn’t comment. “He’s _soggy_.”

Barry thinks about moving so he can see Taako as more than a movement out of the corner of his eye, but he lets it be. He can tell his brother-in-law is there from the shape of the space, from the smell of his shampoo and the way a warm, solid hand lands in the spot between his shoulder blades.

“I just.” Barry sucks in a breath that’s shuddery from all the ugly crying, “I just missed you all so much.” 

“Yeah.” Magnus rumbles, tightening his arms so Barry’s a little bit crushed against him, “Us, too.” 

Taako makes the noise that means he’s about to be pedantic, and then the startled noise that means Lup’s snapped him with a spark of static electricity to shut him up before he can be pedantic, and then his voice comes out wavery and honest and soft. “Us too, Barold.” 

Barry nods into the soft, faded flannel of Magnus’s shirt.

It’s over. They know him, he knows them, they’re all alive and the Hunger isn’t. They won, they did it, and they never, ever have to watch that monster devour another plane behind them ever again. They never have to search for the Light, or study it, or break it into pieces as part of the biggest mistake of their collective lives, ever again. 

Tomorrow he’ll ask Taako and Magnus and Merle to come with him. They’ll take a wagon so they’ll be able to bring the pod out of the cave and take it somewhere else. Anywhere else. That will add a day, maybe two, but he can . . . he can live with that. _One hundred twenty-four days._ He can live with that. 

Lup’s Mage Hand tugs his glasses off and puts them aside somewhere, brushes the tears away from his cheeks. Her presence is a warm, safe, living thing that he can feel all along his back and shoulders, settled in his chest. 

“Better?” She asks, and he can hear her. Four thousand two hundred and seventeen days later and he never has to try and remember the sound of her voice again. 

“Yeah.” Barry mumbles, closing his eyes on the blurry night around him, leaning into the second-best hugger on the Starblaster while Lup runs her spectral fingers through his hair and Taako shifts around to drape himself against the rest of them. 

“Better.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen so much meta about Lup being touch-starved after her time in the Umbrastaff and I am in no way arguing that she wouldn't be, but I couldn't help feeling that this is probably also the case for Barry considering how single-minded and lonely he was during the decade. So I fixed it. 
> 
> I have a tumblr at punkahudsonia if you want to stop by and say hello!


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